


Sticker pack of dreams

by Scoby



Series: Reylo metafiction [9]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Addictive Psychedelics That Fix TROS, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, At what cost, Crack Treated Seriously, Drug Addiction, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Happy Ending, Holding Hands, Inspired by Reylo Stickers, Kylo Ren is a Mess, Meta, Rey is a Mess (Star Wars), Rose Tico is a Good Friend, Strangers to Lovers, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28645950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: "Freya, let me ask you something. Have you tried those RSD-infused Reylo sticker packs that Afterblossom sells now?"“Eh, errr, nn…”"I’m only asking because I was just reading about the side effects. It seems that you get this euphoric feeling that everything is right with TROS, but the comedown is awful and your awareness heightens around everything you dislike and you start aggressively hating it. I know you and you’ve always been pretty neutral about that movie. So now that I saw you post loving tweets about it last night and hateful this morning, I couldn’t help but suspect…"“Look, Roza, I’m fine.”"Afterblossom only says in very small print that RSD may be addictive. Freya, please, as your friend, I want to know. Have you taken it?"
Relationships: Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo metafiction [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099463
Kudos: 3





	1. The Trip

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [Afterblossom](https://twitter.com/_afterblossom_) for creating the absolutely cute [Reylo sticker pack](https://www.afterblossom.com/store/pre-orderreylo-sticker-pack) that inspired this fic, as well as for making a cameo in the story. The image is by Afterblossom, too.
> 
> Of course, the real stickers are not blotted with drugs and I don't recommend sucking them :)

  
_Order my Reylo sticker packs[here](https://www.afterblossom.com/store/pre-orderreylo-sticker-pack)! _ _Each sticker is die-cut with white background, each pack contains 10 different designs. Check out also the version blotted with RSD for the ultimate fix-it trip!_

The sample image of the stickers looked overwhelmingly cute. Freya opened the thread to have a look at the comments on @_afterblossom_’s tweet:

_Oh. My. God. The ultimate fix-it trip, definitely!_

_Really cute design, and the effect of the RSD-blotted version… Let’s just call it the answer to my prayers_

_If you’re still battling with your feelings over TROS, what are you waiting for? This is your saviour and it’s just a click away_

_The whole experience is like magic. You put this beautiful sticker on your tongue and the next thing you know is whole TROS transformed to exactly how you always wanted it. Sounds impossible, right? Believe me, you have to try it yourself!_

Freya opened the ordering link and her eyes widened. RSD-blotted stickers cost five times more than the unblotted ones. Besides, the effects sounded unbelievable. Could it really be worth it?

She had seen The Rise of Skywalker a couple of times. It was not her favourite Star Wars movie but she found it satisfying. There were some elements she would have wished to be different, though. Most of all, she would have wanted Ben Solo to survive, but she had figured that there were artistic reasons behind the choices and still found plenty of things to enjoy and cherish.

But what if she really could have it all her way? Would it be worth 50 dollars? She remembered Roza’s words when they had gone out for coffee last time. Freya had ordered a plain filtered coffee to save money, while Roza had savoured a peppermint latte with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkle and said: _Live a little. You never treat yourself to anything_.

And treating herself was difficult when she was so used to rigorously saving money after spending most of her life having so little. But the past years she had spent in a stable job in a software house and managed to save up a considerable buffer. Besides, she had just received new salary last week so…

She selected one RSD-blotted Reylo sticker pack and clicked _Add to cart_.

It took a couple of weeks for the package to arrive, and Freya had forgotten all about ordering it in the meanwhile. When she eventually opened the yellow-tinted envelope, her heart jumped at the sight of ten different Reylo designs, even cuter in print than in the sample image. And when a little slip of paper with instructions for use fell out of the envelope, she remembered that these stickers had another function besides feeding her sweet tooth for cuteness.

She selected the smallest sticker, a shrugging Ben Solo, to try out first. The posture of the tiny figure looked adorably like the real one in the movie. It was one of her favourite moments, that whole scene actually, until the kiss and the smile after it. Freya detached the sticker carefully from the backing paper and stuck it on her tongue.

It tasted pungent, just like sticker glue, and she really wondered if the whole thing had been a scam and she had paid a five-fold price for completely normal stickers, because nothing seemed to happen. Until her head started feeling oddly dizzy.

She sat down and tried to gather her thoughts back to what she had been thinking: the fight against the Knights of Ren and Palpatine, the kiss, the smile and then… Wow… She remembered, solid and clear, Rey helping Ben stand up and limp back to the stone elevator and up to their ships.

She browsed her memories back towards the beginning of the movie. And she recalled in exact detail Leia’s beautiful funeral and how, after everyone else was gone, Rey brought Kylo there through the Force bond. The image of him crying by his mother’s grave brought tears to Freya’s eyes again. Or was it again? This was kind of the first time she recalled this. But she had to have cried when she saw it in the movie, because this felt so exactly like her real memory that she must have actually seen it.

She also remembered clearly how Finn, Poe and Rose had all travelled the galaxy pulling off heroic stunts culminating in Finn leading a stormtrooper revolution. Some of their jokes still made her chuckle. And the elegant, logical and scientific explanation for Palpatine’s return still made her shiver at the capabilities of the Sith. But she had no memory about Rey ever being referred to as Palpatine’s granddaughter. The only concept of Rey’s parentage left in her head was from the end of The Last Jedi.

Most of these things, she had never even actively wished for. But now that she recalled them from the movie, they seemed to make perfect sense. Out of a sudden burst of love towards the Skywalker saga and its cathartic ending, she opened Twitter and filled all the 280 characters with praise for her new favourite parts. And when that was not enough, she filled another tweet.

Freya had no idea how much time she spent in the blissful feeling. But something about it made her sleepy and she laid down on her bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers, and closed her eyes, dreaming about Rey and Ben’s upcoming life together that had clearly been hinted at in the end of the movie.

She woke up early next morning with a throbbing headache. But the worst thing in her head was not the physical pain. It was that she remembered The Rise of Skywalker again in the same way she used to, and she could not stop thinking about it. Her mind kept pulled to the smallest of details. And what she had previously brushed off with a shrug and a thought like ‘not my favourite but ok’, she now found herself hating fervently. With shaky hands, Freya reopened Twitter and posted a screenshot of Kylo Ren in his dashing white quarters with text:

_I just woke up remembering that there are random white space cylinders in his bedroom. Wtfffff!!?_

She dragged herself to drink a glass of water, brush her teeth and shower. It made her feel marginally better. Her body felt a little fresher, but her mind still craved back to the sweeter memories of the movie she had enjoyed last night. She could not recall any specifics of those anymore, only the echo of knowing that everything had been a lot better.

Freya looked at the sticker pack still spread out where she had left it on her table and instinctively already extended her hand to pick it up again. But she shook her head and pulled her hand away. She needed to go to work and should not be thinking about a movie there.

The workday crept forward at a snail’s pace. By lunch time, Freya felt like she had already been answering emails for days. And all the time, her thoughts kept drifting back to The Rise of Skywalker and everything she now hated about it. She welcomed the distraction when her phone buzzed with a call from Roza.

“Hey! What’s up?”

_Hey, Freya! I just called to check if you’re ok?_

**“** Yeah, sure. Why?”

_I was just thinking… You never tweet so aggressive stuff like this morning._

**“** It was just something I was annoyed about. All’s fine with me.”

_Freya, let me ask you something. Have you tried those RSD-infused Reylo sticker packs that Afterblossom sells now?_

“Eh, errr, nn…”

_I’m only asking because I was just reading about the side effects. It seems that you get this euphoric feeling that everything is right with TROS, but the comedown is awful and your awareness heightens around everything you dislike and you start aggressively hating it. I know you and you’ve always been pretty neutral about that movie. So now that I saw you post loving tweets about it last night and hateful this morning, I couldn’t help but suspect…_

“Look, Roza, I’m fine.”

_Afterblossom only says in very small print that RSD may be addictive. Freya, please, as your friend, I want to know. Have you taken it?_

“Sorry, my boss is waving at me. I need to stop now. I’ll call you later, ok? Bye!”

Freya put her phone on silent and glanced over the open-plan office to the other side where she could see through the glass wall into a boardroom where her boss really was immersed in a meeting. As soon as she got home that evening, she stuck a Dark Rey sticker on her tongue.

In a week, Freya noticed to her horror that she had gone through almost the whole sticker pack. She ordered three new ones with express delivery and tried to not pray too loud in her head for their quick arrival, because that would be pathetic. She tried to stretch the first pack by cutting the rest of the stickers in half. Still, she had to spend a whole weekend without any before the new ones arrived, and that was agony. She kept lashing out on Twitter, mulling over a detail after another.

On Sunday afternoon, she had agreed to see Roza for a coffee. She debated cancelling, but that could only add to her friend’s suspicions, so she opted for sprinkling bronzer on her face to cover the worst of her paleness and meeting her as planned.

“Still the filtered coffee?” Roza asked, looking at her order.

Freya shrugged, hoping to bypass the question. Inside her head, she was calculating how to make sure that she could afford new sticker packs as soon as she would need them.

“You’ve lost weight”, Roza said.

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment.” Roza stared at her sternly under an uncomfortable silence for several long seconds before saying: “You’ve been tweeting a lot this weekend. I’m pretty sure your treatment melted that poor medal.”

That made Freya smile a little. Roza was referring to her post from this morning – one that made her feel pretty accomplished: a closeup of dying Leia’s hands with text:

_Why the fuck is she holding this medal when dying? It’s way out of character for Han Solo to care about a Rebellion medal enough to keep it for long, even if it’s from Leia. Couldn’t anyone go to Ahch-To to get his dice back? Or couldn’t they Force project themselves into her hand or something? Goddammit please at least put in her hand something even remotely meaningful for their relationship!!!_

“I hope so”, Freya said aloud.

“Will you now tell me if you’ve used the RSD-blotted Reylo stickers?”

“And what if I have? Is it your business?”

“I’d like to stay up to date. So that I can keep an eye on you and make an intervention if…”

Freya slammed her hand on the table hard enough to spill drops of coffee out of her cup and a few chocolate sprinkles out of Roza's.

“It’s none of your business. You don’t have to intervene. I’m in full control. I can stop whenever I want.”

Roza still eyed her with suspicion. But she seemed content with finally getting a vague confession out of her. They dropped the subject and avoided it for the rest of the afternoon. When Freya arrived home afterwards, she found a new yellowish envelope in her mailbox.

Without thinking, she ripped the envelope open, picked out the largest sticker with Reylo and porgs and stuffed it in her mouth.

She felt possibly even better than ever before. So good that she decided to rewatch The Rise of Skywalker, and there it was: the end to the saga just like she wanted it, even better than she could have imagined. She tried to commit every line, every visual detail to memory so that she would remember them even after coming down from RSD.

But the next morning, she could not recall anything. She had a sense of the feeling she had experienced – sweet, blissful, fulfilled, nourished – but all the concrete images about what had happened in the movie were erased from her head. A shower and a glass of juice eased her headache a notch, but the reality of the contents of The Rise of Skywalker that swirled in her head did not give her peace.

But she wrestled through the workday, pushing her aggressive thoughts aside until the evening when she could finally suck another sticker. And that was how she scrambled through the whole week. But the next Monday, they launched a new version of their accounting software, and Freya knew that the most annoying customer complaints on Earth were going to be swarming in her inbox as soon as the updates were up. She convinced herself that it was ‘just for emergency’ when she stuffed a sticker pack in her purse before leaving for work.

The day was as chaotic as she had predicted. The new software version had several little hiccups and she typed a reply after another saying ‘our team is working on it’ to complaining customers. By afternoon, she was full of it. She sneaked to the bathroom with her purse, took out the sticker pack and slipped a sticker with Rey and Matt the Radar Technician in her mouth.

Soon, she felt like she could breathe again. She could recall vivid images of her now favourite movie in its true version. Or at least this was what she had started to call the true version of it. She went back to her desk, responded a few emails with renewed ease but was interrupted by a giggle when she remembered the exact look of Kylo Ren’s unmade bed when Rey stumbled upon it in his quarters. She opened another tab for Twitter and typed:

 _I want in that beeeeed_ …

Just a moment later, Roza called. She was already laughing again when she picked up.

“Heyyy, girl! Wha-Whassup?”

_Freya? Are you high at work?_

Freya giggled louder. “Maybe.”

_That’s too much. I’m going to intervene._

“I’m just having fun. I’m replying to some shitty customer emails but it doesn’t matter because all I’m thinking about is Reylo kissing on the Falcon over and over again. You remember that?”

_Freya, that didn’t happen. You’re high in the middle of the afternoon._

“What does that matter? I’m getting my work done. Like a charm. Just ask my boss.”

_You still heard me right. I’m going to intervene. Try to take care. Bye!_

When Freya returned home after work, she found Roza at her door. The afternoon’s sticker had made her sleepy and she tried to push right by her.

“This has gone too far, Freya.” Roza stopped her by grabbing her arm. “You need help.”

“Just lemme sleep. Lemme sleep.”

“Ok, you can sleep, but I’ll stay with you and tomorrow morning I’m taking you to rehab. Open your phone for me so I can let your boss know that you’re not coming to work tomorrow.”

But Freya could not even open her door. Roza had to fish out her keys from her purse and open the door to help her in and to her bedroom. She fell face first on her bed.

Roza used her friend’s fingerprint to open her phone so that she could check her boss’s number and send a message to explain the situation. Then she searched through Freya’s purse and apartment. It was not hard to find her stashed stickers. Roza threw them all in the trash and used Freya’s keys to take the trash out. She even sent a message to Afterblossom, asking for Freya to be banned from further purchases of RSD stickers.

Since Freya's pantry was almost empty, Roza cooked herself a bowl of plain rice. Clearly, the stickers had been interesting her friend lately a lot more than food, which could be seen in the way how bones were all but sticking out of her. While eating, Roza opened her phone for more research about what Freya had got herself into.

It turned out that the stickers had become a massive trend, and tons of people around the world were addicted to them. Those who had hated The Rise of Skywalker at first sight had been the first ones to seek the stickers out and get a momentary relief, only to find themselves hooked after just a few trips. Then had come those who were like Freya, pretty neutral about the movie but imagining that it could always be better, trying a couple of times and falling to the same abyss. The most depressing examples were people who really liked the whole Star Wars sequel trilogy but who thought the stickers looked so cute that they wanted to casually try sucking the trendy RSD version. The comedown effects made even those people forget everything they used to love about the final episode.

But Roza found sparks of hope, too. Several drug rehab clinics had already started specialised programs for RSD addicts. She found one that was in the next neighbourhood and pinned the address. Content with her research, she squeezed in to Freya’s bed next to her and stretched a blanket over them.

In the morning, Freya was as grumpy as expected, but Roza made her eat a small bowl of rice and dragged her out and all the way to the clinic.


	2. The Process

Freya cast a murderous look at Roza when she left her at the mercy of nurses with their endless questions and tests that lasted the whole morning.

Eventually, she was given a lunch tray and asked to stay until a group meeting in the evening because apparently “support group is the most powerful element of rehab”. As the afternoon went on, she had to admit even to herself that it was not completely healthy how her thoughts kept returning to the stickers. 

She checked all the pockets of her purse several times. But apparently, Roza had removed the pack she had with her yesterday. The pain was so agonising that she wanted to crawl out of her own skin. From her phone, she posted a salty tweet about how much she hated allies who showed up out of nowhere when asked by Lando, after nobody had come to Leia’s aid on Crait. Her tweet got hundreds of likes almost immediately, probably from other RSD addicts who were in the midst of comedown symptoms. But those did not sooth her much.

Finally, a nurse told her that the group meeting was starting and guided her to a classroom-like space with tables pushed to the sides and seven chairs with lavender-coloured upholstery placed in a circle around the middle. She sat down in one, and the rest of the chairs were gradually filled up by other people in silence, until a tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, middle-aged woman entered, wearing a beige cardigan over a white blouse and smiling serenely.

“Welcome, everyone, especially our newcomer”, she said with a subtle nod at Freya. “I’m Emily, and I’ll be facilitating this group, which means that I’ll offer you some guidance, but what this really is about is yourselves. This is a safe space where you can acknowledge your addiction without being judged and share all your feelings around it and your rehab process, both your highs and your lows.”

Emily took a few calm breaths and let her gaze scan through all the eyes in the circle.

“We have been developing our RSD program on this clinic ever since the first cases began popping up. And what we have learned about RSD rehab is that there are two important aspects you need to commit to if you want to heal. The first one is how you take care of yourself in real life. You have to commit to eating well, drinking plenty of water, moving your body, spending time in nature, surrounding yourself with people you love, all of that to make sure that your own life can support and nourish you and you do not substitute your basic needs with RSD.”

She took another slow breath and leaned forward in her chair.

“The second one is to address the cause for why you keep using, which is your disappointment with The Rise of Skywalker. Right now, your brain is telling you that the only way you can cope with that is by sucking more of those stickers, because it changes your reality instantly to one where everything is perfectly as you like it. But every time you come down from that, you sink deeper into what really happened and hate it more. So you must understand that it is not a sustainable solution.”

Freya was fidgeting in her seat when listening to this woman talk painfully slowly. She was well aware by now that her own behaviour was not sustainable. But it was still the only thing available for her, right? She could not just throw her stickers away and start feeling miserable all the time, could she? Like she had heard her thoughts, Emily said:

“There is another way, and it is available to each one of you. Everyone can heal, not by fighting what we hate but…”

She made a prompting gesture with her hands and the group completed in unison:

“…by saving what we love.”

Emily smiled. “And that is what this group is about. You must understand that fundamentally, The Rise of Skywalker is a piece of art. And any piece of art can arouse a multitude of reactions in us: love, hatred, hope, disappointment, inspiration… What matters is what we do about that. Do we get fixated on the idea that the original piece of art has to be changed by using a psychedelic substance that alters our reality around it? Or do we take action to tell ourselves the stories we want to hear, for example by surrounding ourselves with beautiful fanart inspired by the original piece and taking it to the direction we want?”

Freya found herself nodding, but at the same time on the verge of tears. She understood now that she had taken the easy route by relying on RSD. But how could she ever go back? Even now, the back of her mind was still thinking about where she could get her next dose. Emily nodded reassuringly towards her direction.

“And that is what we are here for. We will go around this circle so that each one of you has the chance to say your name, acknowledge your RSD addiction and share where you are in your rehab journey. Finnick, would you like to start?”

She nodded at a young, black man on her right, clad in a leather jacket over a white t-shirt. Outwardly, he did not look as bony and fragile as Freya herself, but he did fidget with the sleeves of his trousers in a way that looked like his hands were grasping for non-existent stickers. Emily’s suggestion alerted him to sit upright.

“Yeah, ok, I can go first. My name is Finnick and I am an RSD addict. I’d say the past week I’ve been feeling pretty solid. I read this fic where Finn sort of developed a new Force power during TROS, and it was so… I’ve never even imagined the Force being used that way. I did feel a few times like I really wanted a sticker, but then I just told myself no and focused on making edits of him seeing into alternative planes of existence and being a badass. And today I just thought that wow, I made it through this week sober.”

Finnick nodded at the next person on his right, who ran his hand through his dark curls and leaned forward on his chair before he started.

“My name is Phoe and I am an RSD addict. I’ve been pretty ok, too. Actually, I picked up drawing again. I dug out some old Reylo sketches I made after TLJ and had forgotten about after TROS. But they were pretty good, and now I’ve started a few new ones. Drawing makes me feel solid, most of the time. Just sometimes, when I get a facial expression just right or something, my heart feels, sort of, hollow. Like, it makes me so deeply sad to think that it didn’t happen, that they didn’t get to live and thrive together. When that happened, I tried to do the thing we practiced, to locate the sadness in my body and let it move. And God, I’ve cried maybe for hours. But afterwards I felt better.”

Phoe looked to his right to pass the turn to a ginger-haired man in an angular collar shirt, who was nervously shaking his left leg.

“My name is Arnold and I am an RSD addict. I was feeling like crap after last week’s meeting. For a whole day I couldn’t think about anything else but what I hated in TROS. But then I thought that dammit, I can do something about it. And I went for a trail run and then I found this comic on Tumblr where Hux was an irredeemable villain who led the whole First Order until he died heroically in the end. It was so well drawn that it was almost like it really happened. And it was fun, too. I started following that blog and it has made me feel a lot better.”

After him, a tall, blond woman talks with a loud voice:

“My name is Fanny and I am an RSD addict. I’ve been doing excellent. You know what, I was at a party at a friend’s house and there were stickers but I didn’t take any! I just told myself that you’re stronger than this and then I did it. I made it through the whole evening, even though most of the others were high and it was painful to hear them talk enthusiastically about TROS when I had no memory of the parts they loved so much. My brain was just swelling with everything I hated. But I just sort of, kept repeating to myself that it’s just hate and it’s ok, like we practiced.”

Emily smiled radiantly and nodded at Fanny and then turned to look at the even taller man next to her. His face was dead serious and very pale, forming a stark contrast to his all black clothing.

“My name is Kai and I am an RSD addict. Just a few days ago I… I…” He trailed off, like not finding the words or being unable to push them out of his mouth.

“It’s ok to say it here, Kai”, Emily prompted. “This is an accepting space.”

“I relapsed.” Kai’s gaze dropped to the ground.

“Do you want to share about it?” Emily asked.

“I was grocery shopping. And for some totally cryptic reason, they played Rey’s theme in the store. I went to the counter to ask why they allow this kind of background music that can trigger people. But they didn’t understand and didn’t make it stop. So the music just forced me to think about Rey riding the sand sledge on Tatooine and how much I hated that she was made a little girl in the desert again, even though she should have been on a green planet with Ben, doing very, you know, adult activities.”

His hands clenched into fists. Somebody with no experience of RSD withdrawal may have thought that romantic thoughts made him aggressive.

“I dropped all my groceries down right there on the floor and ran home. But I didn’t have any stickers because I’d thrown them away and blocked myself from Afterblossom’s store the other day when I was feeling solid. But then I went out and I noticed that from my neighbour’s mailbox, there was a corner of a familiar-looking envelope coming out, and I pulled it out and opened and it was just what I had thought. And I took the Dark Reylo sticker on my tongue and stuffed the rest back into the envelope and to the mailbox. I’ve been so ashamed that I’ve been doing everything I can to avoid seeing any neighbours. And all the time, I keep thinking about Rey alone surrounded by sand, and it drives me mad. I don’t know how I’ll keep my hands off if my neighbour orders another pack.”

Kai turned to his right to pass the turn to – Freya. Their eyes met for a moment, and she was struck by seeing her own pain reflected in his deep amber-coloured eyes. If possible, Kai looked even more torn apart than she did herself. A flush of deep-rooted sympathy shook her, and she needed to gather her thoughts for a moment to get ready to speak.

“My name is Freya and…” Now that it came to it, it was way harder to say it aloud than she had thought. She felt embarrassed at how quiet and shaky her own voice sounded. “…I am an RSD addict.”

Freya cleared her throat and tried to convince herself that the worst was over. But her mind felt blank. Looking at Emily’s reassuring smile did not help her organise any thoughts. But it did convince her that there was no need to be organised.

“Errr… I don’t know what to say. I’m… lost. Just yesterday, I was high at work, and the next thing I knew my friend took me here. And I’ve been the whole day without stickers. I have no idea how I’ll make it through the night. Or through the next day.”

“May I offer a suggestion?” Emily asked.

“Be my guest. I have none myself.”

“An accountability partner is a very powerful rehab tool we have discovered. Like Finnick and Phoe here are accountability partners, and you just heard how far they’ve come. And so are Arnold and Fanny.”

“What does that mean?”

“Would somebody like to explain?” Emily looked around the circle with raised eyebrows. Arnold stopped shaking his leg and explained:

“Well, it goes so that whenever I feel like a sticker, I call Fanny and she talks me through it. Like reminds me to breathe and recognise my emotions and find a healthy outlet for them. And I do the same for her. Once Fanny had such a weak day that she stole half of a sticker pack from a colleague at work. At home in the evening, she was _this_ close to sucking one, but with the last of her self-discipline, she still managed to call me. I went to her place right away and just held her hands so that she couldn’t reach for them. And then I threw them away.”

“It didn’t go that way, silly”, Fanny laughed. “When he got to my place and saw the stickers, he suggested that we ditch the accountability for a second and each take just one and then we throw them away and go back to being sober tomorrow. _I_ had to literally hold _his_ hands and throw the stickers away myself.”

Emily chuckled, too. “But does that happen to you anymore?”

Arnold and Fanny both shook their heads and smiled at each other. Emily turned back to Freya.

“There, you see how effective it is. Now, since you and Kai are both having trouble, I suggest you to be accountability partners. You’ll be surprised about how much it can advance your rehab.”

Kai and Freya turned back to look at each other, and there it was again, the despair and pain that went straight into Freya’s heart and would pierce it if it was not already in fragments. Silently, they both nodded. And when the meeting ended after a bunch of breathing and emotional processing exercises, they exchanged numbers and addresses.


	3. The Cure

Kai’s number quickly surpassed Roza’s as the most frequently dialled one on Freya’s phone. For the first weeks, she needed somebody to talk her through an RSD craving every night, on bad days even in the afternoon at work. And Kai seemed to need exactly the same.

For a few weeks, they managed to keep each other sane in the midst of painful withdrawal symptoms that kept their most loathed elements of The Rise of Skywalker occupying their brains nonstop. Every night, whichever of them happened to be stronger that day talked calming words to the other one, reminding them to eat and take a walk and often reading a piece of fanfiction aloud. When Kai had had a particularly strong day, he even read his own drafts to Freya. She kept feeding him with suggestions and encouraging him to publish his fics, but for the time being, he kept shying away from it, insisting that he was not ready.

When Freya had a particularly strong day, she usually also called Roza or went to visit her. Like that, she managed to ease her friend’s worries by showing that she was making progress. Eventually, she was even able to mumble aloud that she was grateful for everything Roza had done for her when she had not yet been aware of her situation herself. Even Roza’s stunt of telling everything to her boss had payed off well, since her workplace turned out very understanding and supportive for her rehab process.

In the weekly group meetings, both Freya and Kai were able to report gradually accumulating little victories, like not lashing out when The Rise of Skywalker was brought up in a casual conversation; spontaneously remembering elements they liked about the movie; and passing mailboxes without stopping to look at them with a pressing urge to search them through in hopes of a chance to steal a sticker pack.

They seemed to make surprising progress, just like Emily had predicted - until a day that Freya spent at a software expo. 

The morning went all fine. She had time to circle around, scout for their competitors’ new products and meet several old and new acquaintances. Freya had always liked expos, which were a welcome change to her work routine behind the computer. Besides, her recent efforts on healthy eating, moving and sleeping had given her an extraordinary spurt of energy that was now coming out as lively, radiant chatter with various exhibitors.

In the afternoon, Freya shifted places with her colleague and took care of presenting their accounting software at their own booth. She filled a whole page with contacts of new potential clients, while still enjoying herself. But towards the end of the afternoon, her legs started fatiguing from standing in heels, cheeks aching from constantly smiling and mouth drying from endless talking. 

She was leaning sluggishly on the booth and already anticipating the moment of arriving home and taking off her heels and bra and talking only with Kai and nobody else – or even better, giving her own mouth a break and just listening to his steady voice reading aloud on the phone. That was when the intern came to help her with packing up the booth.

Freya did not remember the intern’s name and did not bother asking. After all, he would only be around for a few months maximum, after which he would get back to his studies and hand his place over to somebody else. He smiled at Freya, though, with all the excitement of a barely-twenty-year-old in his first job in his field, as he arrived at the booth carrying a bunch of white cardboard tubes for storing their posters. 

White cardboard tubes. When he placed one to stand on the booth and started detaching and rolling up the closest poster, Freya could not take her eyes from the white cardboard. It looked exactly like the white random cylinders in Kylo Ren’s private quarters.

The poor intern blinked his eyes when Freya struck the poster tube with all the force of her arm. It flew straight to his perplexed face, and his nose started to bleed. Blood dripped on the poster he had been rolling.

“Sorry but you’ll have to take care of that yourself”, Freya said and fled out of the expo hall.

At home, she dialled Kai’s number with trembling hands.

“You have to help me. I can’t believe what I just did. I might get fired. Kai, please…”

“No, I can’t do anything for you right now. " Kai's voice came out shaky, far from the soothing timbre Freya had imagined meeting her on the other end and making everything right. "I barely managed to pick up your call. I’m here on the floor. I just need a sticker so badly. There’s nothing else I can think about.”

“In that case, hold it right there. I’m coming.”

But Kai did not stay on the floor. When Freya arrived, she found him outside of his apartment, trying to fit his too large hands into his neighbours’ mailboxes in search of familiar, yellow-tinted envelopes. A few mailboxes were already smashed, and pieces of metal lay around him on the floor.

“Your hand is smaller. Freya, please, we have to find… I’m sure some of them order those. Try here.”

He took her hand and tried to push it through a narrow slit to scavenge somebody’s private mail, but she pulled it back and fought to get a hold of his hands.

“No, we can’t do this. We have to go inside. Kai, listen to me. One step at a time. We go in and then we calm down and get through this. Now, walk.”

Eyes still on the mailboxes, Kai took one reluctant step after another, until they were inside his apartment and Freya sat him down on his couch, still holding both his hands.

“Now, breathe, in, out, in, fuck… I can’t do this without a sticker. Not after I just saw the space cylinder. Let’s go back and search…” Freya moved to stand up but Kai used his grip on her hands to pull her down.

“No! Freya, no! We already made it here, now stay. You breathe, in, out, in, out, we got this. Somehow, we got this.”

But just the action of starting a sentence with “somehow” made him squirm in pain.

“Just feel it, let it flow through you”, Freya said. “You got this. I got you. You’re not alone.”

“Neither are you.”

The reference to The Last Jedi made them both relax a notch, until it made them think about Ben Solo’s dead body fading out of existence and leaving Rey exactly alone.

“What the fuck do we do?” Kai squeezed Freya’s hands to the verge of numbness.

“We can’t give up now. Do something! Read me a new fic of yours.”

“I haven’t written any new ones.”

“Then improvise. Just talk to me. Tell me who they are in it.”

“Errr, they are…” Kai looked at Freya, then at their frantically joined hands and back at Freya’s face again. His mind blanked apart from only one scenario: “They are drug addicts. Rey was born with a heroin addiction because her mother was a junkie who used during pregnancy.”

“Yes, and Ben got into speed when he studied in his uncle’s boarding school”, Freya added. “So much pressure was put on him that he had to take something to stay alert and study all night. Tell me what happens to them.”

“They go to rehab at the same clinic. But they are not accepted to the program because, errr…”

“Because the doctors think they are both hopeless. And they don’t want to risk their reputation by taking in addicts who won’t recover.”

“Yes, that’s it”, Kai said, his voice growing stronger with excitement. “They are both leaving the clinic at the same time and about to go home and get high again because it’s too late and there’s nothing else to do. But right then they meet in the lobby and discover that they are in the same situation.”

“And then they decide to start helping each other get sober! How does that go?”

“It goes first fine. When one of them craves for a dope, they call the other one first, and they can always talk each other out of it. But then one day, they are both having excruciating withdrawal symptoms at the same time.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Ben calls Rey but she can’t say anything to him because her whole body is screaming for a shot.”

“Uh-huh, but she does get it that he’s in trouble, so she runs to his place, because if it’s their destiny to relapse, just like the doctors predicted, at least they’ll go down together. And when she gets to his flat, she finds that he has already got a quick delivery from the guy who used to sell him speed before.”

“That’s Snoke”, Freya suggested.

“No, that’s Hux. Snoke would be somewhere higher up in the food chain, not dealing with individual users.”

“Ok, you’re right. But what happens in Ben’s flat?”

“Well, Rey finds that he has sprinkled a line of speed on his couch table, and he says that it’s too late. He’ll only do it this once and then go back to being sober and supporting her. And Rey’s mind is all hazy but she realises she cannot let him relapse after promising to support him.”

“So what does she do?”

“Ben is bending over the couch table for a snort, and right then, with all the strength she can gather, she kicks the whole table aside, straddles his lap and kisses him. And then all thoughts of heroin vanish from her mind and she finds herself high with a very different kind of substance – very muscular, dark-eyed, raven-haired and plush-lipped substance.”

Freya smiled whole-heartedly for the first time after the disastrous end of today’s expo.

“And that happens to Ben, too”, she said. “He's not even mad about Rey destroying his trip because all he can think about is her taste and the feel of her mouth and the urge to get his hands all over her.”

“Right. And that’s how they realise what they can do every time either of them has a craving.”

“And does it work for them?”

“Yes, of course, they are Reylo.”

They fell silent for a while, the implications of Kai’s conclusion hanging in the air between them. Finally, Freya slightly loosened her grip of Kai’s hands, stroked over his knuckles with her thumbs and said aloud:

“Should we try it?”

“Do you think it would really work?”

“Who knows? Could be worth a try.”

“Are you sure? But what if…?” Kai’s eyes seemed to suddenly find something very interesting in the fabric of the couch pillow.

“What do we have to lose? You’re still aching for a sticker as much as I am, I can see that. What if making out could save us from this misery? It can’t be as bad as this. In fact, I’ve been thinking it could be pretty good.”

“That’s what I’m concerned about.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that I find you very, I mean _very_ attractive, and I’ve been thinking that kissing you would be very, very good. If you want it just to get over withdrawal, I’m not sure I can take it. I’m already thinking about you every day, more than is appropriate for an accountability partnership. Adding a kiss to that… I don’t know if I could hold back anymore from totally falling for you. It would break my heart to be this close to you but only kiss you when…”

“Jesus, Kai, is that really the issue? How about I promise you that if you kiss me this one time just to try out if it helps, I’ll kiss you any time you want? In fact, I’ll kiss you more than you can stomach if you’ll just let me.”

“Really?”

“With one condition only: you publish that fic about drug addicts Reylo.”

“I can do that”, he said, this time without hesitation.

Quickly, they turned into a bundle of entangled limbs, mouths devouring each other like a human-sized sticker. And Kai had to agree that it worked just like in the story. All withdrawal symptoms dissolved and only the sweet, intimate sensation of passion and closeness was left. 

But they already knew better than to assume that the battle was won and Freya could go home. So they deemed that it was safest to keep on making out until late evening. And from then on, that was what they repeated daily, regardless if one of them was having trouble or not. In the next group meeting, through just a little bit of awkward blushing and giggling, they reported that they had found a solution.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can order your own sticker pack [here](https://www.afterblossom.com/store/pre-orderreylo-sticker-pack) (non-RSD-blotted version only)
> 
> Let me know what you liked in the comments and find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/IamScoby)


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